Scotts First Discovery Expedition

The exploration of the interior of Antarctica and the race to the geographic pole started with the British National Antarctic Expedition of 1901-1904. It was jointly sponsored by the British government and by the major British scientific societies of the time and was led by Commander Robert F. Scott (1868-1912) of the British Navy (Huntford 1986a). The objective of this expedition was to explore the Ross Sea sector of Antarctica. Tbe expedition was given a new ship christened the RRS Discovery which was designed and built for exploration in Antarctic waters. The third officer of the crew was Ernest Henry Shackleton (1874-1922) who was entrusted with the job of preparing the Discovery for a 3-year voyage to Antarctica (Fig. 1.9a and b). 

The ship was equipped with two steam engines and carried 335 t of coal. The expedition left England in August of 1901 and reached Lyttelton Harbor on the South Island of New Zealand at the end of November of the same year. After restocking the ship with provisions, the expedition headed south to Cape Adare and followed the coast of Victoria Land to Ross Island. From there, Scott sailed east along the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf to the coast of West Antarctica which he named King Edward VII Land. 

Scott had brought along a captive helium balloon in order to view the terrain in Antarctica from a high elevation. He deployed this balloon on February 4, 1902 at the Bay of Whales and took turns with Shackleton to observe and photograph the surface of the Ross Ice Shelf from a height of 790 ft or 241 m (Victor 1964, p. 178). Scott s ascent in a tethered balloon came only 

53 days after a similar ascent by Drygalski along Kaiser Wilhelm 11 Coast of East Antarctica. The ship then returned to Ross Island where Scott and his men erected a wooden hut that had been built for use on a ranch in the outback of Australia. 

This hut in Fig. 1.10 still stands at the tip of Hut Point Peninsula about 1 km from McMurdo Station of the USA at 77°51 S, 166°40 E. This station was initially estab-hshed in 1955 by Rear Admiral George J. Dufek of the US Navy and was named after Lieutenant A. McMurdo who served with Captain Crozier on the HMS Terror. 

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